I’ve been trying to think of this too. It seemed like Putin already had everything he could have wanted with a frozen conflict in Ukraine, preventing it from joining NATO. This is what I’ve come up with:
Ukraine might have still been able to join the EU, which would mean an attack on Ukraine would activate the EU defensive alliance, which would in turn activate NATO. I’m not sure how realistic this was.
Ukraine might have been admitted to NATO anyway, with the ongoing conflict. This seems unlikely.
Ukraine might have been able to defeat the Russian army in a conventional war over just the DPR/LPR, likely in a blitz that would leave it without the breakaway republics. If Ukraine accepts the loss of Crimea, this would allow it to join NATO. Picture the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, but between Ukraine and Russia, with Ukraine using Western technology and drones. I find this somewhat more plausible, but it’s not clear why Putin couldn’t have simply recognized the DPR and LPR and stationed Russian soldiers there as a “tripwire” similar to NATO in the Baltics.
I think the overarching reason is exactly what Putin says it is: having Ukraine join NATO is unacceptable for both the Russian national image and for Russian national security. Putin’s issue in Ukraine has always been EU/NATO membership and the departure of Ukraine from the Russian sphere.
One aim I could imagine having in Putin’s shoes, that seems better achieved by slow telegraphing of war over Ukraine followed by actual war (vs by a frozen conflict), is gathering information about how the West is likely to respond to any other such wars/similar he might be tempted by.
(I know nothing of geopolitics, so please don’t update from my thinking so. I got this idea from this essay)
I sort of get it and I want to believe it. But it makes no actual sense and that’s terrifying. The west would barely care if Putin was doing this in the *stans or Georgia. The only other target to go to after Ukraine is Moldova and then the Baltics.
If he goes in the Baltics that’s war with NATO. Nothing about the reaction to Ukraine makes a difference there. It’s black and white NATO vs not NATO.
I feel like the most parsimonious explanation is he’s not being very rational, rumors about him having terminal cancer are also pushing me towards that belief. It really doesn’t seem like anyone on the Russian side saw this coming either, which is extra scary.
The Baltic states are part of NATO, but I doubt it really makes a difference for the average American. Putin saying to the US “don’t get involved, or we will send nukes” may be just as effective before invading Estonia than before invading Ukraine.
That has been a key problem of NATO’s defense posture for many decades: How believable is it that the US will risk complete self destruction to protect the freedom of European countries? And iirc that was one reason during the cold war to switch from “massive retaliation” to “flexible response” as a deterrence doctrine.
As it was then, even now, I think, it is not about assuring the adversary that the US will be involved—there can’t be certainty about that. It is more about changing the probabilities for a US involvement. That is the main reason behind the troop movements to NATO’s eastern border, e.g. US F-35 fighter jets and an infantry batallion. An operation killing American soldiers in combat is massively more risky (and therefore, hopefully, much less likely) than an operation without this risk.
Telling the US “Get out of the Baltic states (even though you have guaranteed their safety), or else” is quite different from “Don’t get into Ukraine, or else”. Furthermore, there are troops in the Baltic states of other NATO countries with nuclear weapons, France and the UK.
THIS. Putin is saying the same thing for 20 years. He doesn’t want to have border countries to be NATO members which he sees an extended arm for the United States (which military is probably true). Putin wanted to join the NATO, NATO wants Russia to be more western. Putin feels bullied. NATO keeps going extending EAST and broke the promise that was given after fall of the Berlin Wall. NATO argues that every country is free to join if they want to. That’s the conflict. Even on the 15th February Putin said he doesn’t want war he just wants assurance that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO.
To put it easy to understand: Putin feels bullied by NATO.
A lot of people keep saying that Putin feels afraid of NATO. I really dislike this meme. Russia has been an imperial aggressor in Eastern Europe(and beyond) for centuries. The belt of countries from the Baltic to the black sea have been the Russian Empire’s victims again and again since the 1700s through to the fall of the USSR.
Now that Eastern European countries are joining a defensive alliance suddenly Putin feels threatened?
Why? He has nukes. The end. No one is ever invading Russia. It is just impossible. NATO is not going to invade Russia.
All NATO membership does is make Eastern European countries expensive or impossible to bully. This is what really bothers Putin.
There is nothing an abuser hates more than when their victims can protect themselves. He is not afraid of NATO invading Russia, an absurd idea that again would NEVER happen, because it takes more than the whims of one crazy dictator to trigger a NATO attack.
Putin is afraid that the people he views as his rightful prey and subjects are now able to defend themselves. That’s it. He’s a predator and he wants his subjects vulnerable.
Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt by taking the BS rhetoric about NATO encroachment seriously. As if NATO was bribing and invading countries one by one to get them to join the way he does geopolitics. Pure projection by a psychopath.
Why? He has nukes. The end. No one is ever invading Russia. It is just impossible. NATO is not going to invade Russia.
Russia has nukes with aging delivery mechanisms that are outpaced more and more each year. If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable. If NATO cyber capabilities could Stuxnet the Russian arsenal, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable.
″ If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable”
Lol. Survive retaliation? Depends on what you mean by surviving. Maybe only get 70% of your country destroyed instead of 100%, maybe only get 70% of the population subsequently die from nuclear winter? Not much of a survival.
Stuxnet the Russian arsenal? Are you serious? That barely worked in a baby nuclear arsenal, do you think it would work in the nation with the greatest nuclear arsenal, and with some of the most capable communities of cyber warfare?
Why would NATO want to pretty much “just almost” destroy the world just to invade Russia?
There are depressingly many Washington think tanks who produce whitepapers on “winnable” nuclear exchanges with Russia and China. It does indeed depend on what you mean by surviving. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
The problem is not what the enemy will do, it’s what the enemy can do.
Maybe no need to attribute any qualities to those papers. If, for instance, the situation was such that such war was inevitable, then yes, it makes sense to know if we could “survive” someway.
My claim was simply that NATO would never invade Russia knowing that it would take at least civilization collapsed. It’s completely self-defeating. The person to which I responded said “it’s not as simple as”Russia has nukes, the end”, in the context of a possible NATO invasion of Russia. All I meant to say was it effectively is.
Our strategy and our Alliance are exclusively defensive. [...] This will also be true of a united Germany in NATO. The very fact that we are ready not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees. Moreover we could conceive of a transitional period during which a reduced number of Soviet forces could remain stationed in the present-day GDR. This will meet Soviet concerns about not changing the overall East-West strategic balance.
It is clear that he is speaking about not deploying NATO troops on the territory of former GDR, not about a broader commitment to not enlarge NATO. Gorbachev himself confirms that “the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all”. So this is just another lie of Putin.
So what’s the end state Putin wants to achieve through invading Ukraine? If Ukraine becomes part of Russia, then Russia will be bordering with NATO states.
Well, then it’s reasonable to assume that Putin’s desired end state is not complete annexation of Ukraine. However, even if Ukraine is an Austria/Finland-type neutral party, outside the Russian bloc but also outside of the American bloc, Putin’s security goals are achieved. The minimum criteria for Putin’s ideological goals being achieved seems like internal autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, the maximum would be the annexation of those areas to Russia in the style of Crimea. So annexation is unnecessary ideologically and strategically, and seems unlikely as a goal.
I’ve been trying to think of this too. It seemed like Putin already had everything he could have wanted with a frozen conflict in Ukraine, preventing it from joining NATO. This is what I’ve come up with:
Ukraine might have still been able to join the EU, which would mean an attack on Ukraine would activate the EU defensive alliance, which would in turn activate NATO. I’m not sure how realistic this was.
Ukraine might have been admitted to NATO anyway, with the ongoing conflict. This seems unlikely.
Ukraine might have been able to defeat the Russian army in a conventional war over just the DPR/LPR, likely in a blitz that would leave it without the breakaway republics. If Ukraine accepts the loss of Crimea, this would allow it to join NATO. Picture the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, but between Ukraine and Russia, with Ukraine using Western technology and drones. I find this somewhat more plausible, but it’s not clear why Putin couldn’t have simply recognized the DPR and LPR and stationed Russian soldiers there as a “tripwire” similar to NATO in the Baltics.
I think the overarching reason is exactly what Putin says it is: having Ukraine join NATO is unacceptable for both the Russian national image and for Russian national security. Putin’s issue in Ukraine has always been EU/NATO membership and the departure of Ukraine from the Russian sphere.
One aim I could imagine having in Putin’s shoes, that seems better achieved by slow telegraphing of war over Ukraine followed by actual war (vs by a frozen conflict), is gathering information about how the West is likely to respond to any other such wars/similar he might be tempted by.
(I know nothing of geopolitics, so please don’t update from my thinking so. I got this idea from this essay)
I sort of get it and I want to believe it. But it makes no actual sense and that’s terrifying. The west would barely care if Putin was doing this in the *stans or Georgia. The only other target to go to after Ukraine is Moldova and then the Baltics.
If he goes in the Baltics that’s war with NATO. Nothing about the reaction to Ukraine makes a difference there. It’s black and white NATO vs not NATO.
I feel like the most parsimonious explanation is he’s not being very rational, rumors about him having terminal cancer are also pushing me towards that belief. It really doesn’t seem like anyone on the Russian side saw this coming either, which is extra scary.
The Baltic states are part of NATO, but I doubt it really makes a difference for the average American. Putin saying to the US “don’t get involved, or we will send nukes” may be just as effective before invading Estonia than before invading Ukraine.
That has been a key problem of NATO’s defense posture for many decades: How believable is it that the US will risk complete self destruction to protect the freedom of European countries? And iirc that was one reason during the cold war to switch from “massive retaliation” to “flexible response” as a deterrence doctrine.
As it was then, even now, I think, it is not about assuring the adversary that the US will be involved—there can’t be certainty about that. It is more about changing the probabilities for a US involvement. That is the main reason behind the troop movements to NATO’s eastern border, e.g. US F-35 fighter jets and an infantry batallion. An operation killing American soldiers in combat is massively more risky (and therefore, hopefully, much less likely) than an operation without this risk.
Telling the US “Get out of the Baltic states (even though you have guaranteed their safety), or else” is quite different from “Don’t get into Ukraine, or else”. Furthermore, there are troops in the Baltic states of other NATO countries with nuclear weapons, France and the UK.
THIS. Putin is saying the same thing for 20 years. He doesn’t want to have border countries to be NATO members which he sees an extended arm for the United States (which military is probably true). Putin wanted to join the NATO, NATO wants Russia to be more western. Putin feels bullied. NATO keeps going extending EAST and broke the promise that was given after fall of the Berlin Wall. NATO argues that every country is free to join if they want to. That’s the conflict. Even on the 15th February Putin said he doesn’t want war he just wants assurance that Ukraine isn’t joining NATO.
To put it easy to understand: Putin feels bullied by NATO.
A lot of people keep saying that Putin feels afraid of NATO. I really dislike this meme. Russia has been an imperial aggressor in Eastern Europe(and beyond) for centuries. The belt of countries from the Baltic to the black sea have been the Russian Empire’s victims again and again since the 1700s through to the fall of the USSR.
Now that Eastern European countries are joining a defensive alliance suddenly Putin feels threatened?
Why? He has nukes. The end. No one is ever invading Russia. It is just impossible. NATO is not going to invade Russia.
All NATO membership does is make Eastern European countries expensive or impossible to bully. This is what really bothers Putin.
There is nothing an abuser hates more than when their victims can protect themselves. He is not afraid of NATO invading Russia, an absurd idea that again would NEVER happen, because it takes more than the whims of one crazy dictator to trigger a NATO attack.
Putin is afraid that the people he views as his rightful prey and subjects are now able to defend themselves. That’s it. He’s a predator and he wants his subjects vulnerable.
Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt by taking the BS rhetoric about NATO encroachment seriously. As if NATO was bribing and invading countries one by one to get them to join the way he does geopolitics. Pure projection by a psychopath.
Russia has nukes with aging delivery mechanisms that are outpaced more and more each year. If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable. If NATO cyber capabilities could Stuxnet the Russian arsenal, MAD is gone and Russia is vulnerable.
It isn’t as simple as “He has nukes, the end.”
″ If NATO missile defense can change the calculus such that retaliation from a first strike seems survivable”
Lol. Survive retaliation? Depends on what you mean by surviving. Maybe only get 70% of your country destroyed instead of 100%, maybe only get 70% of the population subsequently die from nuclear winter? Not much of a survival.
Stuxnet the Russian arsenal? Are you serious? That barely worked in a baby nuclear arsenal, do you think it would work in the nation with the greatest nuclear arsenal, and with some of the most capable communities of cyber warfare?
Why would NATO want to pretty much “just almost” destroy the world just to invade Russia?
There are depressingly many Washington think tanks who produce whitepapers on “winnable” nuclear exchanges with Russia and China. It does indeed depend on what you mean by surviving. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
The problem is not what the enemy will do, it’s what the enemy can do.
Maybe no need to attribute any qualities to those papers. If, for instance, the situation was such that such war was inevitable, then yes, it makes sense to know if we could “survive” someway.
My claim was simply that NATO would never invade Russia knowing that it would take at least civilization collapsed. It’s completely self-defeating. The person to which I responded said “it’s not as simple as”Russia has nukes, the end”, in the context of a possible NATO invasion of Russia. All I meant to say was it effectively is.
I looked up the source of Putin’s claims that NATO promised not to expand, and it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Putin cites the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990, during negotations about NATO deployment in Germany. Here is the quote in context:
It is clear that he is speaking about not deploying NATO troops on the territory of former GDR, not about a broader commitment to not enlarge NATO. Gorbachev himself confirms that “the topic of NATO expansion was not discussed at all”. So this is just another lie of Putin.
There are NATO troops in every NATO country, though.
So what’s the end state Putin wants to achieve through invading Ukraine? If Ukraine becomes part of Russia, then Russia will be bordering with NATO states.
Well, then it’s reasonable to assume that Putin’s desired end state is not complete annexation of Ukraine. However, even if Ukraine is an Austria/Finland-type neutral party, outside the Russian bloc but also outside of the American bloc, Putin’s security goals are achieved. The minimum criteria for Putin’s ideological goals being achieved seems like internal autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk, the maximum would be the annexation of those areas to Russia in the style of Crimea. So annexation is unnecessary ideologically and strategically, and seems unlikely as a goal.